Quick-​​thinking students save a life

President Aoun thanks the courageous undergraduate students for their grace under fire

On a warm April after­noon at North­eastern University’s Parson’s Field, Danielle Pesko and Samantha Cook rushed to the side of Jake Negrotti, an employee in the facil­i­ties depart­ment who had col­lapsed and lay motion­less at the edge of the field.

Pesko and Cook, who had just begun prac­tice with their Ulti­mate Frisbee club team, now had a much bigger chal­lenge: admin­is­tering car­diopul­monary resus­ci­ta­tion (CPR) and saving a man’s life.

“It was kind of sur­real, but, I had trained for that sit­u­a­tion so many times, that I was pretty con­fi­dent I could do it,” said Pesko, a sopho­more chem­ical engi­neering major who learned CPR as a life­guard at a water park in New Hampshire.

“Thank God there were two of us, because it’s a lot for one person to handle,” noted Cook, a health sci­ences major who learned the life-​​saving tech­nique in a course offered through the Bouvé Col­lege of Health Sci­ences; a require­ment for all health sci­ences majors before going on co-​​op.

“You phys­i­cally can do it by your­self,” she said, “but it is way easier for two people.”

Negrotti expe­ri­enced erratic gasping and then vom­iting, so Pesko and Cook quickly turned him on his side, cleared his airway and con­tinued per­forming the procedure.

About the Writer

Kara manages external communications at Northeastern including media relations and social media. She earned a B.A. from UMass Amherst and an M.A. from Suffolk University in Boston: both degrees are in communication. Kara joined Northeastern in 2010 and has spent nearly a decade working in PR, advertising, and higher education. When she’s not QWERTY-ing away somewhere between Huntington and Columbus, Kara can be found spending time with her family, and tending to a nearly defunct food and music blog.

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